Throughout my life I have been the clown,

In the classroom and in life.

I made jokes for other people to laugh to,

Yet it wasn’t my jokes they used to laugh at.

 

My head, my shoes, my scrawny legs,

My chest, my stomach, my large feet.

If any part of me was too small,

Another became too big.

 

I could never be – no,

I would never be perfect.

Not in the eyes of the people around me,

And certainly no longer to myself.

 

The qualities I once prided myself for having,

My hopes, my dreams, my ambitions.

Everything that made me who I was,

I felt ashamed of.

All those “qualities” seemed silly.

My hopes, ridiculous.

My dreams, preposterous.

My ambitions, ludicrous.

 

My parents couldn’t help me,

So they became a part of the problem.

They couldn’t understand what I wanted,

They were from a different time.

So I didn’t tell them my goals,

But somehow they still made them seem stupid.

 

My dad always ranting about how the video games I played were stupid,

A waste of time, good for nothing.

Not knowing that I wanted to be the one creating the games.

My mom, always silently shouting suggestions,

Saying I need to become something great,

Just like all the other adults.

But they’re definition of great came from a different dictionary then mine.

Engineer! Doctor! Lawyer!

Those were my options.

Lawyer, Doctor, Engineer!

Lawyer, Engineer, Doctor!

Doctor, Layer, Engineer!

Engineer! Engineer.

I could never catch a break from the people saying I need to be an engineer.

I was being forced down a path I didn’t want to travel,

Because my grades were good, or better than average, I had to be an engineer.

Those people never understood that wasn’t what I wanted.

They never understood, they made me feel worse.

 

This torture began in the first grade,

All of the people teasing, no, slicing.

Slicing me apart with their words.

Taking my personality, who I was,

Taking it away, breaking it apart, and handing back the shards.

Among the shards of myself, there was something new.

Each time my shards were given back,

There was a new piece.

Each time my shards were returned,

I became less of myself.

 

I speak truthfully from my heart,

While it bleeds from the bullet wounds, no,

Not bullets, though they feel just the same.

While it bleeds from the words piercing through me.

I scream in my maddening silence,

As the blades called words echo across my flesh.

Their sting similar to the lashes from the whip we call a tongue.

They burn like the fires from the poisons we call opinions.

 

I make jokes for people to laugh at.

I don’t do it out of kindness,

I do it out of fear.

I make myself the clown to defend myself,

Because if people are too busy laughing at what I say,

They won’t have time to laugh at me.

Right?

 

Wrong.

The clown has no feelings,

The clown takes no offense,

Anyone can say what they want about the clown,

Because they need not worry about hurting a person.

The clown is not a person,

The clown tells jokes because he is a joke himself.

 

Well I am the clown.

I make jokes for people to laugh at,

To prevent them from laughing at me.

Yet this does not make me immune.

Your words do not bounce off me like rubber bullets.

Nor do they glance off my skin like blades of grass.

 

Your words pierce deep inside me,

And stick as if held with concrete.

The rip threw me like a chainsaw rips a tree,

They devour me like a lion devours a gazelle,

They weigh me down as if instead of words were poured into my ears,

Lead was poured in my mouth.

I am the jokester for a reason:

Not because I am the one least affected by remarks,

I am the one affected the most.

 

I speak from behind a bleeding heart and shattered soul.

My deepest wounds are the ones you cannot see.

Caused by the sharp edge of words and the stinging lash of tongue.

 

Opinions course through my veins,

But they are not my own.

My shattered soul remains,

My broken spirit still resides inside my body,

But someone else’s, no

Everyone else’s opinions linger in the cracks.

Everyone’s opinions flow through my veins,

Widening the cracks in my soul as my spirit seeks repairment.

 

I am not myself,

I am the product of everyone’s making.

I am not myself.

 

People claim they choose to practice “tough love,”

But love is not always a healing force.

There are always two ways to use a tool.

Knives can be used by chefs to create meals,

Knives are used my murderers to steal lives.

Chainsaws can be used to create masterful ice sculptures,

Chainsaws are used to demolish miles of forests.

Just like these tools,

Love can be used to create something beautiful,

But it can also be used to tear someone down.

 

I make jokes because I was the joke.

People believe I’m happy because I laugh,

But they do not know me.

They know the creation of others,

Then they add their part.

They do not know me.

After all these years,

Not even I know me.

 

~Kyle Thomas